I have created a character in illustrator and imported it as comp into AEcs 5.5 So I wanted to use the time>echo effect as it moves across the screen but I cannot seem to get it to work. It works fine with shapes and text but not with my character. I have precomposed the character so its not that. When I look at the character comp it has a border that extends out to the edges the comp its nested in, woud this have something to do with it? How do I get the movements to echo?

If you have a solid-color background that extends out to the composition frame edge, then you're "echoing" the movement of that edge. You need to separate your character onto a different layer than the background and use the Echo effect on just the character.